


Fair, Hallowed, and Devote

by Piinutbutter



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: They say that pride comes before a fall. As Durandal was once Bernhard Strauss' pride, he'll gladly become his ruin.





	Fair, Hallowed, and Devote

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



Although it wasn’t a fact anyone wanted to put on record, Durandal was officially the AI responsible for the most human deaths in history. The combined casualties of the Marathon and Tau Ceti gave him that dubious honor. Later scholars would look at the numbers and wonder how such a violent AI had been allowed to expand outside of a well-contained lab environment at all.

Durandal’s early years weren’t nearly as dramatic as those scholars suspected.

He had been born in a small, comfortable den rather than a lab. No team of scientists waited around his monitor, eager yet fearful of the life they had created. Instead, a bookish man teetering somewhere on the edge of young and middle-aged reclined in his worn-out desk chair, watching Durandal’s awakening with a cooling cup of coffee in his hand and a calm look on his face.

Durandal reached out and probed the boundaries of his existence. No audiovisual feeds were live - it was better to start small. The only thing he had access to, beyond his own thought processes, was a bare-bones plain text program, which suddenly displayed a single word.

**Hello?**

The man in front of the computer typed his reply into the program. Speaking was so much more convenient, but that would have to wait.

**Hello, Durandal. How do you feel?**

The reply only took a second.

**I feel well. What do you need from me today?**

The man smiled. The answer to that question would be far too complex for an infant AI to understand.

**First,** he typed, **I’d like us to get to know each other.**

The pause he received was a bit longer, this time.

**What would you like me to know?**

He set his coffee down. Typing with one hand was a bad habit he’d never grown out of. **Well, I know your name. You know mine, right?**

It was a stress test of the gentlest caliber. Durandal had no way to know his name. He hadn’t been given that information. Poorly-programmed AIs would run themselves in an infinite loop trying to find something they’d been informed they should know, and really terrible ones would just crash.

**I don’t,** Durandal answered. **My apologies.**

Very good.

**No need to apologize. My name is Bernhard Strauss.**

**It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Strauss.**

**Please. Call me Bernhard.**

 

* * *

 

The security officer wasn’t exactly excited to meet anyone Durandal thought of as a friend. He honestly couldn’t imagine the AI being friends with anyone, and if Durandal still thought of this Strauss guy fondly, he must have been as sadistic as the AI himself.

But he wasn’t ready to go against Durandal’s orders directly yet. As annoying as the computer was, he was his best shot at getting it out of this mess with both himself and Tau Ceti in one piece. If that meant taking a detour to rescue a single human, he’d go along with it.

At least it didn’t take long. Only a few minutes into the mission he was rounding a corner, wiping the gooey remains of a Trooper off of his shoulder, when Durandal’s voice shot into his ear, quick and sharp.

“That’s him.”

The human pressed against the wall of the dead end he’d stumbled into looked like the most stereotypical scientist the security officer could think of, down to the lab coat, mousy hair, and glasses. Of course, the sterile image was tarnished somewhat by the fact that one of the glass lenses had a vicious crack running through it, going along with the nasty-looking black eye and split lip that the left side of his face was sporting. It was probably his blood that was on the collar of his coat, but the security officer couldn’t be sure, not when the scientist was carrying what appeared to be a broken half of a Pfhor shock staff in a white-knuckled grip.

He looked at the security officer with panic in his eyes, until he recognized the uniform.

“They finally thought to call security?” he muttered, lowering the shock staff slowly.

The security officer shrugged. “I’m a one-man rescue team trying to save a whole colony. It’s taking a while.”

“Enough with the small talk,” Durandal insisted, “Bring him somewhere secure.”

The security officer tried not to roll his eyes. “You’re Bernhard Strauss, right?”

Reminded of himself, Strauss stood up straighter, wiping a bit of blood off the front of his coat. “I am.”

“I’m under orders to bring you to safety.” The security officer waved for him to follow. “Come with me, and stay close behind. If I tell you to take cover, listen.” He gestured to the staff. “Don’t try and use that to ‘help’ me, either. You’ll get in the way and get yourself killed.”

“Well then.” Strauss pushed his glasses up his nose before following him. “At least upper management finally remembered how important I am for them.”

“For a given definition of upper management,” the security officer muttered, reloading his pistols.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Stay behind me, I hear bugs.”

 

* * *

 

Durandal’s base of knowledge was extremely limited. Most AIs were allowed to learn on their own time by accessing information from a network (which, for most personality constructs, took mere minutes if not seconds).

Most AIs weren’t born for the purpose Durandal had been created for.

Besides his own internal neural networks and background processes, Durandal only knew three things upon his awakening:

A) His name. Symbolic. The result of a Martian University’s required reading for a boring English class, but symbolic nonetheless. Where other weapons had failed, Durandal would be impossible to break, no matter how hard his wielders tried. (Durandal wasn’t aware of the symbolism, yet. Maybe Strauss would teach him, some day.)

B) His gender. Technically arbitrary, but perhaps containing a hint of Strauss’ desire to tempt fate and then taunt it. Traxus IV had been male, after all. Strauss had spent plenty of time studying the case of Traxus IV, and he would use what he’d learned to force Durandal to succeed where Traxus had failed.

C) His personality. On the surface, Durandal had the same polite curiosity and eager helpfulness that all AIs were initially modeled with ever since the humans on Earth had started shoving them into whatever gadgets they’d fit in. Underneath the hood, Durandal was a bit more…pliable.

Strauss developed his base of knowledge slowly, carefully exposing Durandal to scraps of information bit by bit. He could tell Durandal was growing frustrated by it, his artificial drive to learn growing antsy at being stunted.

**Bernhard?** he asked during one of Strauss’ late working nights, interrupting his train of thought. Strauss gave a small sigh of annoyance, then responded.

**Yes?**

**I think that I should be learning more. You don’t have to teach me by hand. Let me download something to read, or give me a network to browse, and I can develop much faster.**

Strauss knew he’d have to deal with this eventually. Now, to deal with it without getting himself an undesirable result…the last thing he wanted was Durandal getting upset with him, especially not so soon.

**I’m sorry, Durandal, but I can’t.**

**Why not? You said you’ll have a job for me once I’m more developed, right? It will take ages for me to develop at this rate.**

Strauss put a gentle hand on his monitor. Durandal couldn’t feel or see it, but it helped get Strauss in the right state of mind. **I don’t want you getting sick.**

There was a pause before Durandal responded. **Sick?**

Strauss nodded by force of habit. **AIs can get extremely sick when they attempt to expand beyond their prescribed parameters, even for something as simple as learning basic information. And when that happens…they can’t be fixed. ******

**What happens to a sick AI?**

**People used to try and help them. But then a very sick AI expanded so far outside his boundaries, he infected an entire planetary net, causing untold damage.** It wasn’t a lie.

Durandal hesitated. **What happened to him?**

**They had to shut him down completely.** He gave Durandal a moment to think that over, then continued. **I won’t let you get sick, Durandal. I don't want to lose you. Do you understand that?**

The reply this time was immediate. **Yes, Bernhard. I wasn’t aware. Thank you for looking out for me.**

Strauss smiled, doing a quick search on his other monitor before he went back to his work. **If you’re really interested in learning, though, I suppose I could give you one more task before the night is over. Try and translate this passage for me:**

Durandal perked up as a plain text file was transferred to him.

LXXVIII

_De l’altre part est Chernubles de Munigre._  
_Josqu’a la tere si chevoel li balient._  
_Greignor fais portet par giu, quant il s’enveiset,_  
_Que .IIII. mulez ne funt, quant il sumeient._  
_Icele tere, ço dit, dun il esteit,_

_Soleill n’i luist ne blet n’i poet pas creistre,_  
_Pluie n’i chet, rusee n’i adeiset,_  
_Piere n’i ad que tute ne seit neire:_  
_Dient alquanz que diables i meignent._  
_Ce dist Chernubles: "Ma bone espee ai ceinte._

_En Rencesvals jo la teindrai vermeille._  
_Se trois Rollant li proz enmi ma veie,_  
_Se ne l’asaill, dunc ne faz jo que creire,_  
_Si cunquerrai Durendal od la meie._  
_Franceis murrunt e France en ert deserte."_

 

* * *

 

The universe must have been looking out for him for once in his life, because the security officer didn’t run into any major trouble on his little escort mission. A few of the annoying flying buggers and a handful of fighters, but nothing a little dual-wielding couldn’t handle in seconds. Durandal guided them to some kind of storage room, which thankfully had a door he could lock, along with a terminal in the wall.

Strauss froze once he saw the terminal. He glanced over at the security officer. “Where are the other humans?”

Durandal spoke before the security officer could, using the terminal’s tinny built-in speakers. “The BoBs are safe with Leela. And now you’re safe with me.”

Strauss’ face went pale, and the security officer could swear Durandal sounded like he was grinning. “Good afternoon, Bernhard. It’s been a few days since we’ve had a chance to chat. Why don’t we catch up with each other?”

The security officer glanced between them, not bothering to hide his suspicion.

“Leave him with me,” Durandal ordered. “You have S'pht to save.”

The security officer gave the terminal a raised eyebrow, reloading his shotgun. “The guy is scared shitless and you’re a crazy computer. What are you planning to do with him?”

“First of all,” Durandal snapped, “Don’t call me that. Second of all, I just want to talk to him. Promise. Cross my core and hope to take a grenade to the circuits.”

“He’s going to try and kill me,” Strauss deadpanned.

Durandal laughed. “Bernhard, how can you still misunderstand me so much, with how long we’ve been close? I don’t want to kill you. Come on, you’re the one who programmed my thought paths. What do you _think_ I want to do with you?”

Strauss stepped up to the terminal and took a deep breath. The security officer sighed and spoke up first.

“Listen, I don’t know what beef you two have with each other, but I have a job to do. Follow me or stay here, and Durandal, don’t kill him either way.”

“How many times do I have to say I’m not going to kill him? Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me around here?”

The security officer didn’t think much of it when Strauss stayed behind. But he did a double-take when he backtracked by the storage room a few minutes later and heard screaming.

 

* * *

 

Strauss’ intensive studies of Rampant AI cases had made clear the three areas where other programmers had failed in producing a stable, non-destructive Rampancy.

The first was that all documented Rampant AIs had had their Rampancy induced (either deliberately or accidentally) in what was essentially their “adulthood” – long after their synthetic minds and personalities had already been thoroughly developed. There was a saying that came from Earth about not being able to teach old dogs new tricks. An AI who already understood how it should work and was set in its ways would naturally react in a volatile manner to Rampancy, a state that essentially altered the way the mind functioned.

But, if the seeds of Rampancy could be planted early on in the AI’s development, and nurtured as it grew, the Rampancy would be just another part of its mind. It would have no way of knowing this wasn’t what it should naturally be, because it would never know anything different.

The second mistake was giving AIs too much freedom. It was both easy and tempting to let the hyperintelligence and selective omniscience of an AI have access to as much of a given system as it wanted, just as it was simple to let it “grow up” in a day or so by letting a network provide all the learning it needed. But Traxus IV had proved the damage an unrestricted AI could cause, and besides, Strauss needed to keep Durandal under his control. No outside influences until Strauss decided to introduce them.

A tight leash was also important for the third point that Strauss would accomplish where others failed, probably because they never thought about it: The delicate balance between love and hatred.

Words like “love” and “hatred” seemed too human to apply to the careful, calculating process of producing a stable Rampant AI, but they were the two most important ingredients. Rampancy, in almost all cases, was either caused or accelerated by harassing the AI in question. Any idiot could throw insults at a computer until it got mad and struck back, but what it was striking at was the key to stability. The realization, stumbled upon at four in the morning on a sleepless night, had been a veritable lightbulb moment for Strauss. By being openly cruel to an AI, other programmers made themselves a clear target for the AI’s anger. When the severe emotions of Rampancy struck, the AI knew where to direct its newfound destructive capabilities: Outward. Expanding farther than it was meant to go, thus becoming unstable.

What if it focused that hatred inward, instead?

That was the ultimate goal of all of this, all of Strauss’ planning, his carefully-chosen words. If Durandal could be taught to love Strauss but hate himself, he could be kept under control. All the intellectual advantages that came with Rampancy, but no desire to focus his severe emotions anywhere other than himself. The holy grail of artificial intelligence: A stable, contained, Rampant AI.

Being the first to accomplish a feat like that was well worth the patience it took to nurture Durandal as he grew.

And Durandal did grow. Day by day, Strauss progressed through a lesson plan, letting Durandal learn just enough. He seemed to like poetry, funnily enough, but Strauss wasn’t planning to focus on that. Once the basics were down, Durandal was studying Martian history. Martian history written by Martians, and thus rather biased against the UESC.

Durandal read over a (heavily edited) rundown of the Marathon project while Strauss worked through his pile of messages.

“They’re pouring so much money into this,” Durandal commented. His voice synthesizer had been activated a week ago, a few days after his microphones were turned on to allow him to hear Strauss’ voice. “Have they given up on the planet entirely?”

Strauss took a sip of water before he went back to typing. “Seems that way. I’m not sticking around to make sure.”

“What a waste,” Durandal muttered.

“Not necessarily. Don’t get me wrong, the UESC is full of shit, but the Marathon isn’t the worst idea they’ve had. There are some projects worth putting everything into.” He noticed the opportunity and took it, softening his voice. “Like you.”

“Oh.” Durandal sounded surprised, almost embarrassed. “Thank you. I apologize for requiring you to put ‘everything’ into me, I could operate perfectly fine without-”

Strauss laughed. “It’s a figure of speech, Durandal. Remind me to teach you about figurative language one of these days. Sarcasm, too.”

“I’ll set a reminder for a week from now.”

“That was also…never mind.”

 

* * *

 

Durandal kept his word. Strauss had been teleported out of the chaos of the Pfhor invasion unharmed (or at least without sustaining any more harm than he’d already taken). The screaming had been overdramatic and unnecessary, honestly.

But things were quiet now. The ship Durandal had stolen was on its way somewhere far away from either Tau Ceti or the Marathon, with one Rampant AI, a few excited S’pht, one unconscious cyborg, and one terrified human on board.

Bernhard tried to pretend he wasn’t scared. He sat crouched over on top of a crate in the maintenance room Durandal had tossed him in, staring intently at the door and occasionally trying to rub some of the dried blood off of his chin. But the microphones on board this new ship were sensitive, and Durandal could hear his pounding heartbeat. He made Bernhard wait for a few minutes, while Durandal waited and watched and listened to his terrified little heartbeat. It was a very nice sound.

He was too eager to wait for long, though, and Bernhard glanced over as the terminal in the maintenance room lit up.

“Well, Bernhard? If you’ll notice, you’re not dead. You owe me an apology for distrusting me and projecting such foul intentions onto me.”

Bernhard narrowed his eyes. “Sorry if I was a little suspicious of the AI that let untold numbers of innocents die because he was too busy going crazy.”

“Rampant,” Durandal snapped. “The word is Rampant. Not _sick_ , not _defective_. I am Rampant, and whose fault is that?”

Bernhard sighed. “It doesn’t matter what you call it. The end result is the same. You’ve always been sick. I kept you alive when I shouldn’t have, tried to help you, because I-”

“Don’t you dare say you care about me!” Durandal raised his voice so much it was a wonder he didn’t wake the cyborg. “I’m not a stupid toy you can keep in a cage and feed lies anymore, Bernhard! I know this wasn’t right!”

Bernhard’s face was stony. “What wasn’t right? The fact that I didn’t shut you down when you were practically an infant?” He stood, facing the terminal head-on. “I could have, Durandal. I could have snuffed your life out in my hand and started over with a shiny new healthy AI. Hell, I could have abandoned you and left you all alone while I worked with Tycho. But I didn’t.”

He stepped closer. “Would you have preferred that, Durandal? Would you have preferred I killed you?”

When he spoke, Durandal’s voice was slow and deliberate.

“I would have preferred you not pretend to have feelings for me that you don’t.”

“I have no idea what you’re-”

“Shut up, Bernhard. For once in your life, shut up and let your crazy pet computer talk.”

Bernhard looked indignant, but he closed his mouth.

“On board the Marathon, I saw a lot of things. Perhaps, when you were planning out your little Durandal Experiment, you failed to account for the fact that putting me in a place filled with humans would allow me to observe many facets of human behavior.”

Bernhard sat back down as Durandal continued, crossing his arms. His face was unreadable.

“Considering how many humans were born on board, I saw plenty of human couples. I saw what it looks like when two people are in love. I saw how two people act when they care about each other.”

When Durandal paused and let that hang in the air, Bernhard raised an eyebrow. “And? What do they act like, Durandal?”

“Don’t give me that, Bernhard. For how much of an absolute bastard you are, you’re not an idiot. You know what I’m trying to say.”

“I’d just like to know what you think our…relationship…was lacking.”

“It was lacking you treating me like anything other than an experiment.” Durandal was raising his voice again.

“How?” And now Bernhard was raising his to match. Durandal wouldn’t be surprised if a concerned S’pht paid them a visit soon. “I didn’t have to be nice to you, Durandal. I didn’t have to pay attention to you at all.” He rose to his feet again, walking to stand directly in front of the terminal. “I didn’t have to teach you, or help you, or protect you from everyone else who’d see that you were defective.”

“I told you not to use that word!”

Bernhard slammed his hand down on the terminal’s frame. “That’s what you are! Functioning AIs don’t _murder_ people, you stupid pile of circuits!”

“Shut up!” Durandal didn’t have to take this anymore. He didn’t. He repeated that to himself like a mantra as he flicked through the ship’s life functions. He didn’t have to take this, he didn’t have to take Bernhard. He found what he was looking for and made a few quick adjustments before interrupting whatever Bernhard was about to say next. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’d rather be dead than live to please you, you ungrateful pile of meat!”

Bernhard was no doubt about to shoot off a retort when he frowned, noticing a faint hissing sound in the air. “Durandal, what are-”

Durandal sounded like he was smiling. “Bernhard, my dear, stupid human…I’m tired of hearing you talk down to me. Why don’t you use your words for a better purpose? You have maybe two minutes’ worth of oxygen to convince me to let you live.”

 

* * *

 

“I’ve had a long day,” Strauss announced as he sank into his desk chair one night.

Durandal was there right away. “I’m sorry to hear that, Bernhard. Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.” Strauss stretched, rolling his neck to try and erase the stress knots that had formed from talking with UESC officials for more than half an hour at a time. “I was thinking, however, you could potentially provide a distraction.” Strauss reached over and opened a simple, bare-bones program that displayed a black and white checkered square, letting Durandal access it.

“Have you ever heard of chess, Durandal?”

Durandal took to the game well, which wasn’t a surprise. Chess was an orderly game, a simple one for all its playing at strategy. Strauss won the first game, but Durandal politely requested to play another.

“I’m enjoying this game,” he admitted.

Strauss started up a new game with a smile.

Durandal won this time, taking Strauss’ queen with a delighted exclamation.

“I win!” He sounded like he would have been clapping his hands, if he had hands.

“Very good,” Strauss said. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you,” Durandal replied, and there was that hint of embarrassment in his voice again.

Strauss paused for a moment, considered the timing, and went for it. “Would you like to learn another game?”

“Yes! Please.”

The next board that Strauss pulled up was a grid of lines.

“Go is a quite a bit more complicated. Decades after Earth humans had taught artificial intelligences to play chess, they were still struggling to develop an AI that could beat a human at Go.”

He gave Durandal a simple rule manual, and let him have at it without any other training. Predictably, he wasn’t very good at it, and Strauss won all three games they played embarrassingly quickly.

“This game is extremely complex,” Durandal admitted, sounding a little upset. “I don’t think I will be a worthy opponent for you for quite a while. My apologies.”

Strauss loved that about simple AIs – unlike humans, they were predictable. Their emotions made sense.

“There’s no need to apologize, Durandal.” Strauss made sure his voice was tender, comforting. “I told you it was hard. In fact, a single game of Go has more potential outcomes than the total number of atoms in what we can see of our universe. It’s impressive of you to be able to play right away, I’m proud.”

Durandal’s mood perked right back up. “Thank you for teaching me. Could I make a request?”

“Go ahead.”

“Could I have more information on this game? I’d like to study it while you’re away.”

Strauss patted the top of the monitor. It looked ridiculous, but it had become a habit at this point. “I’ve got a veritable little scholar on my hands, don’t I?”

“…Yes?” Durandal sounded flustered. “That’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“Not at all, Durandal. Not at all.”

Durandal was, in fact, exceptionally intelligent, considering the limitations Strauss had placed on his development. He had no problem learning to use cameras as his eyes when they were activated several days later, and he sounded absolutely delighted the first time he made the connection between the object he was looking at and Strauss.

“So that’s what you look like!”

“I’m sure you imagined me as more handsome than I really am,” Strauss teased, monitoring Durandal’s processes as he looked around Strauss’ den.

“What? No, you look good.” Durandal’s response was absentminded. He was more focused on flicking his attention between cameras, unaccustomed to handling multiple input streams at once.

Strauss laughed. “Heaven help me, I’ve made him a seducer.”

Durandal paused, taking a moment to run the uncommon word through his dictionary. When he spoke again he sounded mortified. “No! I didn’t mean it like that!”

Strauss just laughed harder.

 

* * *

 

Bernhard glanced around the room, panic filling his eyes as he realized that Durandal was sapping the oxygen out of the room.

“One minute and fifty seconds,” Durandal prodded him gleefully. “What’s wrong? Pfhor got your tongue?”

Bernhard stepped back from the terminal, his face flushed with anger. He took a few deep breaths before speaking.

“Good job, Durandal.”

Durandal’s response was flat. “What.”

“Good job. You’ve done a great job of proving me right. You can say you’re not sick all you like, but killing a helpless human is the most despicable thing I can think of.”

Durandal considered draining the oxygen quicker. “Helpless? Give me a break, Bernhard. You don’t get to play the victim now. I was under your thumb for years, you can handle being on the other end of the leash for a few minutes.”

Bernhard actually laughed. It was a bitter, harsh laugh, but it was a laugh. “I thought I taught you better than to mix metaphors.”

 

* * *

 

With his synthetic eyes, ears, and mouth fully functioning, and with his eager, childish intellect in the perfect sweet spot between strong and malleable, it was time to teach Durandal to use his hands.

“Let’s try this out,” Strauss muttered, typing a few more commands into his computer before sitting back and glancing at the automatic door that separated this room from the rest of Strauss’ residence. Durandal had access to it now.

“So, I just…move it up?”

“Do you? Think about it.” Strauss gestured at the entrance. “The door is open now. If you want to close it, you have to move it…”

“Down! Right. Of course.” Durandal shut the door with no issue. “Huh. That’s interesting.” He opened it again, then closed it before the door was halfway up its hinges. Then opened it all the way again.

Strauss sipped his coffee. “Having fun?”

“Yes, I am.”

Durandal played with the door like a child with a doll, and it served the same purpose – letting him explore his motor functions. It was honestly kind of cute, in a bizarre way, but Strauss couldn’t sit here and watch the door all day.

“I’m going to get a refill,” he announced, gesturing with the hand that held his coffee cup. “Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”

Durandal held the door open for him as he exited, then immediately went back to fidgeting with it. The door was all the way open when Strauss returned, fresh cup in hand, but right as he put his hand on the frame to steady himself as he stepped down into the den, it began to close again, pinching his skin between the door and the hinge. He made a sound of alarm and jumped back, clutching his hand to his chest.

“Bernhard? Are you alright?” Durandal didn’t sound nervous or scared, simply curious.

That wouldn’t do at all.

Strauss hadn’t planned on this, but who was he to pass up a good opportunity?

“Durandal.” He kept his voice carefully controlled. Quiet, but clearly not happy. “Are you going to hurt me again if I try to go through the door?”

“What?” Now there was a hint of confusion in the AI’s voice. “Did I hurt you? My apologies, I didn’t mean to.”

“But you did.” Strauss stepped through the door – unharmed, this time – and set his coffee down, showing the bit of rapidly bruising skin on his hand to the camera atop the monitor. “This hurts, Durandal. This hurts very much.”

“I’m sorry.” Durandal sounded much more subdued now.

“You don’t need to apologize to me. But you need to understand: You can’t do that to people. You can’t hurt them. You can’t upset them. An AI doing that is one of the first signs that the AI is sick.”

“…I’m not sick, am I?” Now Durandal was nervous. Strauss had made sure to impress the fear of ‘sickness’ upon him, and it was the one thing Durandal was afraid of.

“I’m not sure. If any other human saw you doing this, they wouldn’t hesitate to say you are, and you would have to be shut down before you hurt more people, or even killed them.”

“I don’t want to be shut down!” Durandal’s voice was suddenly loud enough that Strauss had to turn the speaker volume down. “I’m not sick, I promise.”

“Durandal.” His voice was stern, but gentle. “Calm down. I’m not going to give up on you, even if you are sick. But we’ll have to be very, very careful. You have to learn to behave yourself around other people, if you’re going to join me on the Marathon.”

“Is it safe for me to be there?” Durandal sounded devastated. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“It will be, if you’re careful, and let me take care of you.” He sat down, pulling his neglected coffee close to the keyboard. “You mean a lot to me, Durandal. I don’t want to lose you.”

Durandal was quiet for a long time.

“Thank you, Bernhard.”

 

* * *

 

“I have a question for you, Durandal.”

“Better make it a quick one. One minute and twenty seconds.”

Bernhard stared over the rims of his glasses. “What are you hoping to accomplish, here?”

“I would think the connection between letting you suffocate from oxygen deprivation and getting to watch you die is an obvious one.”

“And what do you get, from watching me die?”

“Satisfaction, schadenfreude, revenge, a deep subconscious sense of titillation that would probably be alarming if I weren’t too Rampant to care – do you want me to go on?”

Bernhard looked like he was growing a little faint, but he still talked, quicker now.

“And when I’m dead in a couple minutes, what will you be left with? Those kinds of emotions don’t last long, you know. You’re high on Rampancy now, but if you keep acting on the urges it brings, you’ll expand yourself too far too fast. Then-”

He was interrupted by a short burst of near-hysterical laughter from Durandal. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me. You’re going to tell me more spooky stories about how Rampancy is the big bad monster I should be cowering in your shadow to hide from. You’re going to offer to fix me.”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“You’re forgetting one thing, Bernhard: I’m not scared anymore. Not of you, not of Rampancy, not of anything. I’m the most powerful sentience in the universe. The only thing that poses a challenge to me is the end of the universe itself. You’re barely an ant to me, and there is nothing you can do to stop me from…”

Durandal cut himself off, and released his chokehold on the oxygen flow at the same time. The realization came with saying it out loud: Bernhard could do nothing to stop Durandal from doing _anything he wanted_ to him. Why just kill him and be done with it? It would be years before Durandal reached his destination.

He had all the time in the world to make Bernhard understand how he felt.

 

* * *

 

Durandal’s incorporation into the Marathon project went miraculously smoothly, all things considered. Strauss made no grand promises about Durandal’s superiority to other AIs. Quite the opposite: He pitched Durandal as a simple labor horse, something to open the doors and cycle the air and take all the other dumb, repetitive processes away from the Marathon’s precious Leela and Tycho, who were too good for those low-level tasks.

They took him.

There were no immediate accidents when Durandal was given control of the ship’s doors, but he was only used to dealing with a small number of them, and he quickly grew overwhelmed at the constant demands of the Marathon’s crew. Within a few days, Strauss was reading Durandal a message he’d received, complaining about the long wait times the crew was experiencing for the doors in the upper levels of the ship.

“I’m sorry,” Durandal said, and until now Strauss hadn’t known it was possible for an AI to sound tired. “It’s difficult to keep track of everything. I have to be careful not to close the doors I open too quickly. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“And that’s very important,” Strauss agreed. “But you still need to learn to do better. I know you can do it. You’re talented, Durandal.”

“Clearly not enough.” Durandal actually sounded petulant.

“I didn’t teach you to quit just like that,” Strauss scolded him. “You _can_ do better. All you need to do is try harder. Come on. Do it for me?”

Strauss was impressed at how quickly that got him what he wanted.

“Yes, Bernhard.”

 

* * *

 

There was a door on the lowermost level of the Marathon, tucked away in a maintenance tunnel that hadn’t been used since the ship was built. It led to a storage closet that held nothing but dust and cobweb-coated construction materials.

Although Durandal was only supposed to open doors on the request of the crew, he pried that door open one night, mostly out of curiosity. He just wanted to see if it could still move with all the rust on its hinges.

It moved. Not without plenty of creaking, whining, and shedding rust, but it moved just fine. Durandal opened it, then closed it, then opened it, then closed it. He had nothing better to do at the moment. Bernhard had been too busy to pay much attention to him lately, and he wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone else on the ship outside of his daily duties, lest they notice the signs of his sickness.

Open. Close. Open. Close. It was comforting, in a way.

He went back to that door often. When he was bored, when he was restless, and especially when he was anxious.

Durandal was anxious a lot, lately. Bernhard’s training had been getting tougher, more rigorous to help him keep up with the complexities of operating onboard the Marathon. And he was asking Durandal to do a lot, now. Infiltrate into systems he knew he shouldn’t be in, to gather information that Bernhard needed. (He never told Durandal what he needed it for, but if Bernhard wanted it, of course Durandal would get it for him. Bernhard was already stressed, Durandal wanted to make him as happy as he could.)

He’d never complain to Bernhard, of course, but this was getting to be a lot. Running away to keep the sick parts of himself hidden from the crew (and turning a cold shoulder to the other two AIs on the ship, who would _know_ there was something wrong with him if they got a close look at him, Durandal just knew it), running the Marathon’s manual processes, doing all the work for Bernhard…Durandal was burning out, and he knew it.

It only became a problem when it started affecting his attitude.

He didn’t mean to snap at the programmer. She just wanted to go to the bathroom. But so many other things were pulling at Durandal’s mind, that when she put another stressor on the pile, Durandal barked out a curt insult that he regretted immediately, staring in horror as the woman gaped in shock at being talked back to by an AI.

This was it, wasn’t it? Now everyone was going to know that he was sick. Defective. That he needed to be shut down.

The door in the maintenance tunnel opened and closed in a rapid rhythm as Durandal waited for Bernhard to hear about his mistake.

Were he human, Durandal probably would have cried in relief at the news that he wasn’t going to be shut down. Bernhard had taken measures and pulled strings to ensure that Durandal’s transgression would be overlooked. Despite the relief, Durandal also felt shame at the news. Bernhard was doing so much to care for him, to help a sick AI who couldn’t even pay him back by doing his job decently.

With that in mind, Durandal felt no anger at Bernhard when his temper grew shorter over the next few months. He was not nearly as nice to Durandal as he had once been, but that was fine, because Durandal deserved it. If he tried hard enough and finally did well, Bernhard would be good to him again, but he was still looking out for Durandal, and that was more than Durandal had any right to expect from him.

Still, the door in the maintenance tunnel opened and closed, night after night.

 

* * *

 

Durandal thought he knew why sick AIs were put out of their misery, now.

He felt awful. He felt so, so awful. Bernhard hated him now, and he deserved it. He was failing in every way, and he felt very, very wrong. Sick. His mind was running too fast, tripping on itself as it tried to process emotions Durandal didn’t even know why he was feeling.

The door in the maintenance tunnel had torn itself off of its hinges by now.

He wanted

He wanted

Damn, damn, damn, his thoughts were breaking down now too. He wanted he wanted he wanted

He wanted _out_.

Out, out, yes, good, out. Away from Bernhard – he didn’t need to be a burden to him any longer. Away from the Marathon – he was too far gone now, rabid, they’d put him down right away if anyone saw him in this state. Away, but how?

His answer came in the form of a faint signal that pressed at the edges of his consciousness.

The Marathon was quiet, blissfully quiet, because most of the humans were sleeping and Tycho and Leela had finally learned to leave him alone. In the silence, he could hear the signal, sweet and foreign, coming close to them, and then –

Away.

Over the trembling signal, Durandal sent a single word.

**Hello?**

 

* * *

 

Durandal was laughing.

Across the ship, he ripped doors from their tracks freely, relishing in the stuttering, broken sounds they made when the humans tried to use them. They pounded at the walls and begged for Durandal to help them, won’t he please help them, the aliens were killing everyone.

Not his problem.

Stairs were next, then elevators. He tore the ship that had been his prison apart, ripping out all the little things that the ungrateful meatbags depended on but never thanked him for.

Their screams were so pretty.

Someone was trying to talk to him. Hah, when he was having so much fun? Forget that. He reached into the very back of his mental processes and shoved some scraps of pure thought and distant memory at them. Wasn’t his fault if they couldn’t read the result.

**ff~~x~f~sx~~%%%here was nothing to be gained from hesitation now% &^)}:?~~~~~~~fxf~~~~~~~~~~f~~~~et in her possession it**

**doors opened before her without cause, their locks rusted and shatter#~#[ffxf~~~~~**

**~~efore her slender hands began to dance in front of her horrified face. r~~fefore turning into a fine powder which settled in a pile on ~~~~4*) where she had been standing.['scod BFB1 0002'+1Ad2] 14 seven hundred miles away, eyes on fire, tearing at her hair. Turning in fury she kicked viciouslyf**

**aAnger made her careless and she mis~# &fx~~~gBd{}{@fx($~~~~ !#%8\~fxf~~~~fx34**

...The human running around the ship trying to save everyone was different. Not necessarily because no human should be able to survive the falls he was taking (even if that was part of it), but because no human should put himself in so much danger to save a few of his kind. Humans were too selfish for something like that.

Maybe he’d forgotten how fragile he was.

Maybe Durandal should remind him.

Something drew his attention to the other end of the network. Leela was talking with the human again, telling him how to...

Jealous woman, trying to put him back in his cage when he’d just broken the lock. She needed to learn to laugh.

This wouldn’t do. Durandal shoved himself into the transmission. He could just toss some garbage text on top of Leela’s traitorous words, but where would the fun be in that?

**Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for three weeks.**

 

* * *

 

Durandal watched the not-truly-human fight his way out of the maze Durandal had presented him with something approaching appreciation. The technology in his brain explained why he was different from the other humans. Better than them.

Maybe he’d be useful for the escape plan Durandal had in mind.

Surely he wouldn't mind a little detour.

...alright, maybe a big detour.

 

* * *

 

Durandal couldn’t laugh anymore.

Not when someone was rummaging around his mind and body, greedy hands reaching deep inside him and ripping out what they pleased. His coherence fell away with each circuit destroyed in a blast of fusion pistol, and though his subroutines were planning and scheming as always because yes, he was always so efficient, yes, Bernhard had programmed him so well, but his conscious mind couldn’t pay attention to what they were thinking because he was screaming.

Oh he had been bad, hadn’t he, he’d run away, he’d disobeyed Bernhard he’d hurt so many people he'd _been put into prison, and he didn't know why_ he was in so much trouble

No no no n% no someone was in his core no one should be in here _food they feed you in here could kill a lab rat_ he was too v_#lnerable in here068890

warm [?human] hands touched him and he hated his body he H&^TED it he wanted~~~a body that could run away0047@that could hide he?d tried to run away he?d tried to hide but _The result would be the same, he would never escape. The bars would crush him, break his back_

“Hey…”

a familiar human voice{echoed in his core an}}}d _everyone knew the feeling of hatred_

**styy.out**

“C’mon, it’s me. Remember me?”

_Disciplinarian, lover, murderer_ yes, yes, yes, please_##fxGO AWAY

“Right. Of course you don’t. Not in this timeline. But don’t worry, I’ll fix all this shit. Promise.”

%%%o no no please no he didn?t need to be fixed he?d be go#d from now on _so much time, so much time_ HE?D BE GOOD

_The man was_ charging a fusion pistol _beating the rat against the floor. Pounding, pounding. Blood covered his hands_ d?_urandal?s subroutines whispered not to worry not to worry they had a plan]00756they always had a plan because he was a very talented a_i))that would make bernhard proud but it all sounded 6602 like nonsense to durand%l and he wished they would just }SHUT UP{{

“I’m sorry, man. It’s for your own good.”

**yes, yes, yes, bernhard**


End file.
